It’s ironic but an official working to improve the Homeland Security Department’s image in the press has been arrested on child porn charges — which isn’t something that will burnish his agency’s image very much:
The deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was arrested Tuesday for using the Internet to seduce what he thought was a teenage girl, authorities said.
Brian J. Doyle, 55, was arrested at his residence in Maryland on charges of use of a computer to seduce a child and transmission of harmful material to a minor. The charges were issued out of Polk County, Fla.
Doyle, of Silver Spring, Md., had a sexually explicit conversation with what he believed was a 14-year-old girl whose profile he saw on the Internet on March 14, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
As this AP story indicates, he was talking via computer with a law enforcement decoy. You’d think that with all of the publicity on television about alleged child molesters be lured themselves to a house where they think they’re going to meet an underaged child or teen they would catch on by now. And someone who works in the press section is presumably aware of what’s going on in the press.
WZZM 13’s story offers some more of the sordid and depressing details:
The Deputy Press Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was caught red handed chatting online with who he thought was a fourteen year old girl. Brian J. Doyle confessed shortly after detectives stormed his home, searched his computer, and interrupted his online conversation with an undercover investigator between 7 and 8 o’clock Tuesday night.
Polk County Sheriff’s Department officials say they’ve been monitoring Doyle for quite some time. They say they were suspicious of his online conversation at first because Doyle identified himself, his occcupation, and offered his office and business cell phone numbers online to the person he was talking to.
Investigators say the undercover cop Doyle was talking to was posing as a fourteen year old girl recovering from Leukemia. Police say Doyle would offer his condolences, and in the next sentence, he’d invite her to engage in sexual acts. Investigators say Doyle downloaded pornography, and sent her 16 pornographic movie clips, then asked her if she’d engage in some of the acts in the films.
There are several aspects to this story. It shows a less-than-stellar vetting process on the part of Homeland Security. But it also shows how potential child molsters lurk virtually everywhere…and that they should know that officials are willing to monitor their online activities until they get them.
UPDATE: Read The Talking Dog’s (always) unique take on this story.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.